As I reported earlier, our Hymer ML-T 580 4×4 is equipped with BF Goodrich LT245/75R16 120/116S All Terrain T/A KO2 tires. I have collected information about the tire pressure from several sources and would like to present them here.

Before continuing our trip northwards on day 14 (June 1st 2017) of our May 2017 France road trip, we took some time off in the morning for a stroll through the impressive historic center of Briancon. Quoting Wikipedia, Briancon at an altitude of 1326m is the highest city in France.

On May 25th 2017, the 7th day of our France roadtrip May 2017, we wanted to travel from Valence (where we had stayed close to river Isère on the camping Le Soleil Fruité) to Villeneuve-Loubet at the Cote d’Azur. Because of the heavy traffic on this long weekend (Thursday May 25 was a public holiday in France) we had already endured hours of traffic jam on the expensive (our Hymer ML-T 580 4×4 is regarded as category 2) French highways on the day before. To avoid similar experiences on that day, we decided to take the national roads through the mountains instead of the highways A7/A8.

Although it took aus almost 8 hours to finish this approx. 350km ride, but due to the beautiful landscape views on that great weather day we would like to recommend to everybody to try this route, too. On our Google Map below you can select the day’s track and study it in detail. You can also download the gpx file here.

At Crest we reached the valley of the river Drôme, that we followed on the D93. Near Beaurierères we left the valley to take the mountain pass Col de Cabre (1180m, see pictures). In the valleys of the rivers Le Buech, Durance and Bléone we continued passing Serres, Sisteron und Digne. From Les Mées, the route was marked as “Route Napoléon”.

On the last third of the distance (Barrême, Castellane, Grasse) we surpassed several times the 1000m height limit (Col de Leques, Col de Luens, Col de Valferrière, Pas de la Faye). At the end of this long driving day, we weren’t surprised that the Michelin guide describes most of the route as “scenic”.

During our trip through the Rhenish brown coal fields (our four year old son is enthusiastic about bucket-wheel excavators) we visited Paffendorf castle. The site run by RWE-Power is worth visiting, especially the vast gardens.